8: Make the Ordinary Come Alive
Make the Ordinary Come Alive By William Martin Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives. Such striving may seem admirable, but it is a way of foolishness. Help them instead to find the wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life. Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples, and pears. Show them how to cry when pets and people die. Show them the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand. And make the ordinary come alive for them. The extraordinary will take care of itself. From experimenting on everyday materials to finding treasures buried in the soil, this is a week of making ordinary things come alive for our kindergarteners. We collected some of the materials that we ordinarily use in the classroom, and discovered some of their properties through experimentation. We anchored our experiments on questions that make us wonder and urge us to investigate and see what the results could possibly be. Question 1: What will happen to our classroom materials if we place the